Articles

EDC staff in Thailand enlisted the help of local university students to bring greater public attention to the scope of the HIV/AIDS crisis in that country. In partnership with film students from Chulalongkorn University (Chula), project staff researched, wrote, and produced three short documentary films that report on factors contributing to the epidemic, the plight of children orphaned by it, and promising new community-based responses.

EDC’s Adult Literacy Media Alliance (ALMA) has developed “Health Smarts While You Wait,” a volunteer-based health literacy program implemented in clinic and hospital waiting rooms to help patients improve their health literacy and manage their healthcare more effectively.

When her son was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, EDC’s Eileen Mackin was shocked at how unfamiliar his school was with handling mental health problems. After years of talking, learning, and advocating, she is now creating resources so other parents and schools can learn from her experiences. With funds from the Weyerhaeuser Family Foundation, she has developed a pamphlet for parents on how they can work with their child’s school on mental health issues and is producing a companion pamphlet for schools.

Many parents acknowledge that teenagers are drinking, but most believe that the drinkers are other people’s children. However, the numbers prove that that hope is likely to be false. In Revere, Massachusetts, for example, surveys found that more than half of middle school students were drinkers. In response, community members invited EDC to help parents and others understand and reduce underage drinking.

What’s the safest position for a napping infant? Which immunizations should a preschooler receive? For those who work in child care programs, such vital health-related questions occur daily. Yet, many child care providers lack knowledge in basic health and safety issues. To fill this need, programs often engage child care health consultants (CCHCs), who bring up-to-date information to program staff. EDC is working with these consultants and state early childhood education and health leaders to enhance the quality of child care services around the country.

The island region of Mindanao in the Philippines has been home to a minority Muslim population for more than five centuries. Much of Mindanao’s history has been marked by war, poverty, inter-clan fighting, and ethnic marginalization. Armed conflict has pulled boys out of school and disrupted the local economy. Today, about half the children in the region do not attend school, and only one in six teens enrolled in high school will graduate.

Many children living on the islands of Zanzibar do not benefit from schooling. There are several reasons: extreme poverty, cultural beliefs that limit girls’ participation, distance from school, and lack of early learning experiences that prepare children to succeed are some of the most important.

Underage drinking affects not only teens, but their families and the community-at-large. An ongoing project in EDC’s Health and Human Development Programs (HHD)is working to change the social norms that contribute to dangerous teen drinking in Revere, Massachusetts, an urban community of 47,000 just north of Boston.

The votes are in, and Jane Addams, the social reformer and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, has been selected as the “American History Idol.” Inspired by the hit TV show American Idol,EDC created a curriculum unit where students write persuasive essays on key historical figures, and the class then votes on who had the greatest impact. To gather, organize, and present information for their essays, students use the software program Draft: Builder, originally developed at EDC and now published by Don Johnston, Inc.

Many active service members and armed service veterans grapple with mental health issues, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and suicidality. These soldiers may be unsure of where to find help or, if they do seek help, may face services that are fragmented or ineffective.

EDC and Jusoor Arabiya, a leadership and consultancy center in Kuwait, presents a panel called Youth Leadership in the Arab World Post 9/11 at the 18th Annual National Service-Learning Conference, organized by The National Youth Leadership Council and the International Association for National Youth Service. It will draw 2,900 students, educators, policy-makers, and representatives from community-based organizations.

What’s the safest position for a napping infant? Which immunizations should a preschooler receive? How can you tell whether a cut requires stitches? For those who work in child care programs, vital health-related questions like these occur daily. Yet, many child care providers lack knowledge in basic health and safety issues. To fill this need, centers often engage child care health consultants (CCHCs), who bring up-to-date information to staff.

EDC is introducing interactive radio instruction to the island of Zanzibar in an effort to reach out to children who have been unable to attend school because of poverty, disability, or distance from school. Using games, songs, and stories broadcast over simple wind-up radios, the project will pilot test its radio lessons in 60 primary classrooms enabling 2,700 children to learn math, Kiswahili, and life skills.

A picture is worth a thousand words, especially when it comes to breaking down cultural stereotypes and crossing linguistic barriers. That’s the thinking behind a new cross-cultural curriculum for Japanese schoolchildren developed jointly by EDC and Iwate University.

Siobhan Bredin, project director of the National Science Foundation-funded ITEST (IT Experiences for Students and Teachers) Learning Resource Center at EDC, will address the United Nations this week, presenting five successful strategies for encouraging young women and girls to pursue skills and careers in science and technology.

Scott Pulizzi, of EDC’s Health and Human Development Programs (HHD), recently returned from Kenya and Uganda, his latest of more than 30 trips to Africa, where he is working to
alleviate HIV. He talked with us about what he’s learned through his special connections
to teachers there, and how their experience has changed his thinking and reinvigorated
his work.

In Uganda, where interruptions to the power supply are frequent, Internet
access is spotty. But a low-cost, low-energy computer lab set up for training rural teachers averts these problems, which tend to damage computer equipment and make it hard to reliably access the Web.

Building on young people’s natural creativity and interconnectedness, Adobe Systems Incorporated has launched a five-year, $10 million program to encourage young people to use multimedia tools, such as film, digital art, and animation, to comment on their world and take an active role in their communities.

Thousands of teachers across the nation teach a wide range of learners, and with No Child Left Behind and IDEA legislation, they are increasingly accountable for the performance of all their students, including those with disabilities.

“Creative and joyful” were the adjectives President Bush used to describe classroom lessons
he observed in Indonesia while visiting with students and teachers taking part in EDC’s national education program there.

How hard is it to afford your own home? Do you have to be rich? A new EDC project is helping students in Massachusetts understand the costs of owning a home and brainstorm ways that communities can make it possible for more low-income families. Students apply what they’ve learned by developing plans for their communities to offer more options for lower-income residents. The combined instruction-community service project was so successful in five high schools that additional schools have adopted it this year.

Watch young people at home today, and you’re likely to see them managing technology with an ease that can inspire awe and envy. They text and they IM; they Google and they design their own Web pages; they download music and burn CDs—all in service of their friendships, romances, interests, and hobbies. But watch young people at school, and you’re more likely to find them seated at desks, listening to lectures, reading from textbooks, and penciling in little oval bubbles on standardized tests.

EDC is working on a new English translation
of an obscure French textbook, Geometrie
Elementaire, a simple yet highly influential text more than 100 years old, written by Jaques Hadamard, considered a giant of 20th century mathematics.

High school biology needn’t be all about memorization and lab reports. EDC is crafting a free bioethics curriculum that will have students discussing such thought-provoking topics as genetic enhancement, clinical trials, vaccination, and genetic screening.

A promising new treatment for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) will be used nationally, thanks to an EDC team that collaborated with researchers from the U.S. Veterans Administration on a program to train mental health clinicians in its use.

According to the U.S. Armed Forces Medical
Examiner, suicide is the third leading cause of death within the armed forces, behind accidents and illness. To help clinicians better assess and manage suicide risk, the U.S. Air Force awarded the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC) Training Institute at EDC a contract to train 1,300 clinicians at 45 Air Force installations around the world.